This graduate of the Institut Universitaire de la Vigne et du Vin, who became ‘Tasteurologist’ after creating the first portable tool for assessing the texture of a wine using a set of fabrics, is widely acclaimed by wine lovers and curious professionals alike. On 11 January, he will be at Athenaeum alongside Florence Tilkens Zotiades to talk about Greek wines and touch…
Wine and education have always guided you…
My father loved wine. I started wine tasting with him. At the time, I used to go and harvest grapes in Gevrey-Chambertin and Volnay, his two favourite vineyards. It was a short step from there to studying oenology. Except that at the same time as I was finishing the Diplôme National d’Œnologue, I was admitted to the Ecole Normale. So my first job was as a teacher. I worked my way up through the ranks and went to Nanterre to study for a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree and then a DEA in educational sciences… In short, I have a good background in education, which I then supplemented with a double diploma from the Institut Universitaire de la Vigne et du Vin in Dijon.
Why did you decide to go back to studying wine?
I crossed paths with the great Jacky Rigaux. He introduced me to geo-sensory tasting. I was fascinated by trying to identify and characterise the links that exist between a terroir and the wine that comes from it. So I got back into it. The fact remains that I found it hard to make the descriptors of this method my own. In my opinion, it lacked a suitable teaching tool. And then there was the fact that very little was said about touch, even though, as any scientist will tell you, it’s the most active sense in tasting. ‘You’re absolutely right: the touch of wine is fundamental, Jacky Rigaux told me. Its texture is its fabric… It needs to be rehabilitated!’
Did you take Jacky Rigaux at his word?
Exactly. In the original sense! After all, the lexical field of tasting encourages us to do so. In ‘Gargantua’, Rabelais speaks of a ‘wine of taffeta, well draped in good wool’. For the wine merchant André Jullien, author of the ‘Topographie de tous les vignobles connus’, wines ‘whose contact with the palate gives a pleasant sensation, unaltered by any harshness’ are described as ‘silky’. More recently, the Burgundian writer Henri Vincenot wrote, in ‘La correspondance du vin’, ‘We chewed together for quite a long time, our eyes in the void, and when the mouthful was swallowed, after a period of discreet ecstasy: – that’s lace!’ And then, the receptors at your fingertips are the same as in your mouth. It all makes sense.
How did you validate your theories?
For a number of years, I embarked on a whole series of experiments: I asked a target audience to attribute 1 or 2 fabrics to each terroir wine they tasted, to give it a tangible touch. I was immediately struck by the impact of this process. It takes the pressure off tasters. There’s no language barrier. They immediately know the right words: soft or rough, thin or thick, supple or rigid, cold or hot… Little by little, I refined the tool, removing fabrics and testing new ones. Until, at the end of 2017, a scientific study validated the approach: a large panel of tasters were asked to assess the texture of 9 different wines, choosing 1 or 2 fabrics from among 8 for each one. 74% selected the same one for a given wine and over 80% considered the proposed tool to be useful, or even very useful: ‘Le Toucher du Vin’ was born, followed in 2024 by a new version called ‘Tastovino’.
A universal tool?
Yes! Its kit of 8 fabrics means you can appreciate the touch of any wine in the world. My wife and I spent over a year testing it, from the most remote vineyards in New Zealand to those right here in Burgundy. But the process goes much further. It can also offer a parcel-by-parcel reading of the touch of a wine. Each fabric corresponds to a type of terroir: natural silk and taffeta for clay soils; satin and felt for silt soils… So that, for a specific terroir, you can identify ‘the’ fabric that embodies the texture of your wine. This is what we do, for example, for Mumm’s RSRV champagnes.
What is your day-to-day work like these days?
I divide my time between working on parcel differentiation for various clients, running workshops in the Revue du Vin de France Academy schools alongside Franck Thomas, Europe’s best sommelier, and music, my third passion after wine and teaching. Part-time, I teach guitar and direct a choir…
And what about Greek wines?
They are of great interest. Many of them come from vines that have not been grafted. This gives them a very specific texture, which accentuates the terroir. The message of touch is much clearer on these wines. Our meeting on 11 January promises to be a fascinating one!